FBI help sought in alleged Waller voter fraud

Secret cameras add to claims by corruption opponent

Published 5:30 am, Friday, August 19, 2011

Sid Johnson was defeated in May but says hundreds of residents said they were deprived of their votes. He and the mayor have asked for a federal probe.

Sid Johnson was defeated in May but says hundreds of residents said they were deprived of their votes. He and the mayor have asked for a federal probe.

Photo: Cody Duty, Chronicle

FBI help sought in alleged Waller voter fraud

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Sid Johnson, a self-described junk man who ran a scrap business from his modest home, had enough of the back-room dealings in Waller County.

So he worked under cover for the FBI to help convict five local politicians on corruption charges in recent years. He then decided to seek political office himself.

Johnson, 47, had high hopes of becoming the first black councilman elected in his hometown of Waller, population of 2,200, nestled in the hilly prairie off U.S. 290.

However, when ballots were tallied on May 14, Johnson lost by five votes. But his defeat has since sparked so many rumblings of voter fraud that he joined forces with the town's mayor, Danny Marburger, who is white, to take voter complaints of intimidation and being turned away from the polls to the FBI and U.S. Justice Department.

The FBI will not confirm whether an investigation is in progress. But Marburger said that during the last two months, FBI agents have circulated through the town 40 miles northwest of Houston taking statements from voters and city secretary Jo Ann London, who serves as election chief.

Marburger said he found the cameras after some city employees complained of an eerie "feeling of being watched."

They showed him a video recorder whose serial number is listed on the Spy.com website for clandestine surveillance. The five suspicious "smoke detectors" are attached to the ceilings of the small brown brick City Hall. It's unclear when they were installed.

Marburger is outraged that employees and elected officials were secretly under surveillance and questions whether voter privacy rights were violated if a camera was in the early voting area.

Denies any violation

London said she never violated any election laws.

"I have been doing elections for 30 years," she said. "We did not do anything to intimidate anybody or stop anyone from voting."

However, after Johnson lost, he said more than 100 residents filled his yard, saying they had tried to vote for him and believed the election had been stolen.

Marburger said he received numerous phone calls from upset voters of all races.

Leslie Kula, 49, and his girlfriend, who are white, said they told the FBI that they were stopped from casting their votes for Johnson.

"They told us we were not registered. But I knew we'd sent in our cards in plenty of time," he said, noting he had received his voter card in the mail a few days after the election. "But I was turned away that day and never offered a provisional ballot."

In fact, no provisional ballots were issued to any voters in Waller County, as the law allows when there is a question about registration, Marburger said.

London, however, contends she offered the provisional ballots, but no one wanted one.

Others have complained that one of the voting machines was unplugged during the election.

Marburger said the FBI confiscated a machine for examination and has not yet returned it.

Feared questions

London acknowledges one machine quit working and had to be replaced, but she says no one voted on it.

Johnson believes some of those in power feared that if elected he would ask too many questions.

After all, he helped make secret recordings for the FBI of bribery and kickback transactions that resulted in the conviction of a mayor and public works director in Brookshire, a mayor pro-tem and alderman in Hempstead and a justice of the peace in Hempstead.

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